New position at CWU-Des Moines aimed at improving student experiences

As anyone familiar with Central Washington University’s seven university centers will tell you, the student experience on the main campus is far different than the one most students have at the satellite campuses.

Because many people enrolled at the centers bring with them a variety of life situations and scheduling needs, they can’t always fit their daily routines into a conventional Monday-through-Friday routine.

Students who attend classes at CWU’s centers — Des Moines, Lynnwood, Pierce, Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM), Yakima, Moses Lake, and Wenatchee — are often time- and place-bound, and they tend to have different expectations for college life. Many also have families, full-time jobs, and other commitments that traditional learners do not.

All of these circumstances add up to a divergent experience that requires CWU staff and faculty to adjust their approach to make centers students feel engaged. As Regional Director Mishel Corea explained, they need their advisors and professors to meet them where they are so they can maximize their opportunities to be successful.

“Student life here at CWU-Des Moines is not the same as it is on the main campus, so we need to offer different types of programming to help them feel connected to CWU,” she said. “Rather than offering social events like they do in Ellensburg, we try to focus on career-readiness and leadership workshops and presentations that will help our students prepare for life after graduation.”

When Corea joined CWU-Des Moines in 2018 as the Associate Director of Westside Student Life, she coordinated career fairs, guest speakers, and leadership opportunities for students. She continued to work with her replacement for two years becoming the regional director at CWU-Pierce in 2021, but a steady decline in Services and Activities (S&A) funding meant the position could no longer be supported beginning in 2023.

But that all changed this fall. Corea worked closely with Career Services Director Katrina Whitney over the past year to bring this popular student-focused position back to CWU-Des Moines. And, as luck would have it, they had the perfect person in mind to fill the role.

Former CWU Career Counselor Jessica Thomas stepped into the Associate Director of Career and Leadership Development position on September 1, and she can’t wait to see how far she can take it.

“I really enjoy my work with Career Services, and when I heard about this opportunity, I was interested right away,” said Thomas (’19), a CWU Psychology alumna who also earned two master’s degrees in Higher Education and Information Technology Management. “What we need is someone who understands the needs of centers students, and after being here for a few years, I thought my perspective would be a great fit.”

Corea and Whitney agreed, and they did everything they could to help fund the position, working closely with Associate Vice Presidents Ruben Cardenas and Kurt Kirstein to identify a path forward. The team eventually landed on a shared funding model that allowed them to elevate the position to associate director status.

But instead of coming out of the center’s limited S&A funding or the Career Services budget, the two teams figured out a way to co-fund Thomas’ new position. In addition to coordinating student programming at CWU-Des Moines, Thomas will also oversee a student success specialist in Yakima, who manages programming for the three eastside centers and CWU’s online student population.

“What we really needed was a leader with a career development mindset who can help guide our students with events and opportunities that are suited to their needs,” Whitney said. “Jessica has been doing that for years, and elevating her into a role where she could make an even bigger impact on our students just made sense.”

Corea and Whitney hope this innovative approach to funding positions like the Associate Director of Career and Leadership Development, which serve multiple functional areas simultaneously, will catch on elsewhere at CWU.

As Corea pointed out, it’s all about working together to build capacity, which is becoming a viable alternative for a growing number of CWU departments.

“I think a key point in all of this is that we're building community between departments,” she said. “I have worked with Kat on events and programming in the past, and she has always been willing to do whatever she can to support our centers students. So I came to her with the idea, and we worked together to find a way to fill a really important position for both of our areas.”

Whitney couldn’t be more excited to see Thomas advance her career in the same location she’s already shown great promise as a counselor. She’s also optimistic that the shared funding model will catch on at the other centers in the years to come.

“Doing this allows us to create a foundational structure and a model for how we can take an intentional approach to our work with our students at the centers and online,” Whitney said. “We can work together, we can be streamlined, and we can provide them with a college experience that is tailored to the specific needs of each campus. The culture at the centers are all different, and we see a lot of opportunity to expand this model in the future.”

With a new title and a dedicated team to support her efforts, Thomas is looking forward to taking the work she is already passionate about to an even higher level. Along with supporting students at CWU-Des Moines, she and her colleagues hope to improve the student experience for students at each of the seven university centers and those who attend classes online.

But even if it doesn’t happen overnight, the mission is clear.

“I’m excited to have more manpower available to handle some these student-facing pieces that we haven’t been able to do in recent years,” Thomas said. “Before this fall, I have spent most of my time helping students, and it’s been hard to take on some of the larger-scale initiatives. But now, we have the capacity to build something new and exciting for them. That’s the best part.”